The study found that people who met for sex through the popular online personal ads increased their risk of infection.
By Dan Browning. Cruising for sex on Craigslist personal ads resulted in a Jason Chan, an assistant professor of information and decision sciences at the U's Carlson School of Management, said he got the idea for the study several years ago while working on his doctorate in management information systems at New York University NYU. Chan's dissertation focused on the social and health impacts of Internet platforms.
In the course of his studies, he'd read about a doctor who traced sexually transmitted diseases to online chat rooms. To my shock, I found out almost all the ads were hookup ads. They were very explicit," said Chan, who wrote the journal article with Prof. Chan explained that because Craigslist entered individual markets without respect to concurrent HIV trends, it provided a "natural experiment" platform for the study.
The econometric method used by Chan and Ghose has the equivalent effect of comparing HIV trends across markets with and without Craigslist, and before and after Craigslist exists in these locations.
They also compared the HIV rate against the number of personal ads in contrast to the number of ads placed by escorts in a separate Craigslist section for professional services. The study found that HIV incidence began to increase about a year after Craigslist entered a market, then climbed through the study period.
